


Empty

by Tvieandli



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tvieandli/pseuds/Tvieandli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s that over whelming empty feeling, that bubbles up in his chest. He doesn’t know how to quite quantify it. Apathy? Depression? What’s the word?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty

It’s that over whelming empty feeling, that bubbles up in his chest. He doesn’t know how to quite quantify it. Apathy? Depression? What’s the word?

Perhaps it’s simply a lacking in himself. That must be it. Like his mother always said, he hasn’t ever been as good, or whole a Bruce. No.

He’s always fought so hard against this feeling. Always distracted himself so well, but now. Now he’s sitting on the couch in his childhood home staring at the walls. Now he has nothing to do.

It’s cold.

He feels the need to crawl behind the couch, and into the crawl space there. Where he’d used to hide with the spiders in the wall, a hand pressed hard over his mouth to keep himself from making any noise when his father started yelling for him.

He pushes the couch forward into the living room, and pulls up the little false panel in the wall. It’s dark inside, and it’s gotten horribly dusty. Cobwebs catch on his face when he ducks through and pulls himself inside.

His hand hits something and it clatters across the floor. He pulls it up, his flash light. The little purple flash light he’d hidden in here when he was four, and things got really bad. It’s still here. Some things never change. Some things are left to rot in the dark for years and be forgotten. He feels a ridiculous kinship with his little purple flash light.

He almost wants to apologize for forgetting it.

He reaches out again, fumbling in the dark, before he finds the pack of batteries he’d hidden with it. He hopes they haven’t died in the intervening years.

He sighs, when he twists the flash light closed, and the light shines up into the rafters far above him, splashing over the bare studs, and wood paneling. He pulls the false board back into place, and tucks himself into a comfortable ball against the wall.

There are pictures taped to the walls. Bruce’s mostly. He’d never been very good at drawing, but Bruce had. They range all through the years, from a picture of them holding hands rendered entirely in crayon, to penciled, inked, and colored fantasies.

There’s a pile of old blankets knotted underneath the pictures next to a lumpy pillow. A pocket knife. The one used to carve things into the studs. He used the knife to write “SANCTUARY” on the wall.

This is his childhood. Hidden away in the dark space inside the walls of an acidic home that threatened to kill him before he’d even taken root. This is where he’d hidden his fantasies. This place was his diary.

“I like to pretend that my parents named me Thomas after Bruce’s dad. I’m going to be just like him someday.” “I wonder if Bruce will ever know how much he means in this world.” “Zatanna is trying to separate me from him using her feminine whiles. It’s her funeral.” “Bruce is just using me.” “He’ll never love me back.”

The reason for everything is carved into the wood here. He can actually look into the past and see when-exactly when he realized he was completely alone, when he realized Bruce was conspiring against him just like everyone else.

It’s heart breaking. He runs his fingers over the grooves that spell out the world. A simple sentence that changed his life.

“I can’t trust anyone.”

He turns to that old crayon drawing. Bruce. How dare he? How dare he die? Bruce was supposed to die by his hand. What right did he have to give his life to someone else?

He pulls the picture down from the wall, and the blank space behind it catches his attention.

“I love you Tommy”

It’s carved in a childish way, the letters too big and gangly.

He remembers one of the few times that he’d allowed anyone in. Bruce had been over at his house, when his father had gotten into one of his moods, and he’d led Bruce to safety. He’d fallen asleep at some point.

Bruce must have-He strokes the little indents.

They had been so young then. Bruce had been four. He’d been six. And already he’d felt that need to protect him. Already he’d realized that Bruce was the only worthwhile thing that had ever been product of the world.

He’d really thought like that once, hadn’t he?

But Bruce had just been using him, pushing him into insanity, planning to-

“I love you Tommy”

It isn’t right that he’s dead.

Bruce had said that he would have his parents adopt him, and that they could go traveling the world together. They were supposed to go traveling. Bruce had promised.

He swallows. Apparently they’ll never scale the Alps together now. Why does that hurt? It’s not like he’s been holding onto the idea of it. He’d let that go when he’d learned that Bruce was plotting-

He hates Bruce so much. Why does everything have to be so confusing?

He lays his forehead against the words, and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t feel empty anymore, and he’s not sure if that good or not, because now his feelings a pitter-pattering on the hard wood, little droplets of moisture   
dusting the backs of his knuckles.

He can’t remember the last time he cried. He’d thought his tears had all dried. Why does he have to be wrong all the time? Why does Bruce have to be dead? Why does he have to be empty?


End file.
